February 22, 2012

Simple Rotating Plate

Sometimes you would need a simple rotating plate for various applications but you don't want to install a lot of sensors and transistors. Well, here's a simple solution! With this rotating disk you can decide if you want to rotate full 360° back and forth or any other angle!

The switch has to have six pins and two on positions!The most important part is a DC electric motor, which is somehow connected to a plate or disk.The motor has to be DC. You will be able to find something appropriate for your project!I used an old geared DC motor and added a simple plate to the axis:

Now we have some soldering to do!Just take some wires and solder the switch's pins together as shown in the pictures below:

The red and black wire go to the power supply.In this case it is a 5 Volt DC pc power supply.

The blue and white wire are connected to the DC motor. Wired this way you're able to make the connected motor go forward & backwards.If you take the wired switch and mount it to the rotating motor as shown in the videos, the disk will rotate around whatever angle you wish.Perfect for a simple rotating webcam:

In this setup the camera rotates full 360°.You're still able to control the motor's speed via voltage or a simple pwm.Adding another little piece of wood to the disk creates a new angle, for example 180°:

There are various possible applications!From rotating security cameras to winding up your automatic watch, there's so much more!